Mon June 7: Great Kills to New York Harbor

 In which we get emotional, several times ...

I know you are on pins and needles, so I won't make you wait.  THE TRICKLE CHARGER WORKED!! The generator started up right away, and purred like a kitten.  Major crisis averted without major expenditure. This time...

This morning it was time to say goodbye to our Meander friends.  As KayDee broke away from the pack yesterday, and Legacy the day before, the band finally broke up.  Lynn and Carolyn are so delightful to be with we are feeling a little emotional - but we know our paths will cross again.

 

I don't know what camera I am looking at, since there was only the one!

To get our daily steps in we walked through a bit of the town, and made a stop at the amazing Italian deli and market, Frank & Sals.  We have been told that Staten Island was founded by Sicilians, and apparently their descendants are alive and well, and working at the deli. We were hugely smitten with both the accents and the food, and came away with lots to eat and speaking in our own version of the SI accent. I'm sure this would have been horribly annoying to anyone else on the boat - but since we are just us, we egg each other on and the accent nonsense went on all day. If you remember the old fabulous Michelle Phiffer movie Married to the Mob, you will know what we were going for!

We took quick showers at the Yacht Club to get off the old sweat, but it was once again very hot (like 92 degrees) so we were immediately covered in new sweat.  It was a relief to drop the lines and head out into NY harbor where the air was cool and the wind was blowing: it was almost cold.  

Coming under the Verrazao Narrows Bridge we could see the Big Apple, and we got emotional AGAIN! A prettier day would have been nice, but one can't complain when one is privileged enough to be on a boat in NY Harbor.

 

Inside the harbor literally everything made us excited.  The Staten Island Ferry!  The iconic buildings! The Hudson River where Tom Hanks, excuse me...I mean Captain Sully, landed the airplane! Barges and tugboats and ferries, oh my!!!!!

Then Lady Liberty came into view and we just lost our shit ...We have three cameras on board, and we went crazy using all of them.  We took approx a bazillion photos.  Good thing we don't have to pay for film.

We are just regular people.  On a boat.  Cruising by the Statue of Liberty.  How is that even possible??????? We felt like at any moment someone would say “hey, you can’t be here!” Or that there would be big barriers/fences up around these precious iconic sights. We should, at least, need a special hard-to-get permit.  It got so surreal that our brains almost shut down. Rick has been imagining this moment from the second we started planning to do the Loop.  

As if things couldn't get any more unreal, it turns out that there is a park behind the Statue of Liberty where you can anchor a boat.  What??  WHAT???? Who knew?  We threaded our way through the numerous Park Service ferries taking visitors back and forth from the Statue of Liberty park and Ellis Island, and turned left into the channel that would take us to where we would stay for the night.  We could have anchored with a view of Lady Liberty, but that water was too choppy. We entered the protected anchorage area to find only one other boat.   There wasn't much of a view, but we still managed to take pictures.

There was a beautiful park right off the anchorage but, it turns out, there is no place to park a dinghy so we just stayed on the boat, rested and tried to reboot our brains.  We devoured the wonderful dinner we had purchased from Frank & Sals (Eggplant Rolatini and broccoli rabe) as we watched the sun set over the city, again humbled by the trip and the new experiences we are having!   Shortly before sunset the sky darkened and we had a terrific thunderstorm, but the anchor held firm and we felt safe all tucked up in our private anchorage.

 

This is the anchor alarm app that we use.  When we drop the anchor the app draws a circle around the area and alerts you if the boat strays outside of it.  That would mean you had come loose and were dragging. Meantime the app draws the meandering the boats makes as it swings with wind changes (or, if you are our boat, you swing just because you can).  I thought it was a kind of fun art! Our boat draws just like a distractable 3-year-old. But at least she stays inside the lines...